John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll and duke of Greenwich (1678-1743), was born on the 10th of October 1678. He entered the army in 1694, and in 1701 was promoted to the command of a regiment. On the death of his father in 1703, he was appointed a member of the privy council, and at the same time colonel of the Scotch horse guards, and one of the extraordinary lords of session. In return for his services in promoting the Union, he was created (1705) a peer of England, by the titles of baron of Chatham and earl of Greenwich, and in 1710 was made a knight of the Garter. He first distinguished himself in a military capacity at the battle of Oudenarde (1708), where he served as a brigadier-general; and was afterwards present under the duke of Marlborough at the sieges of Lille, Ghent, Bruges and Tournay, and did remarkable service at the battle of Malplaquet in 1709. He was very popular with the troops, and his rivalry with Marlborough on this account is thought to have been the cause of the enmity shown by Argyll afterwards to his old commander. In 1711 he was sent to take command in Spain; but being seized with a violent fever at Barcelona, and disappointed of supplies from home, he returned to England. Having a seat in the House of Lords, and being gifted with an extraordinary power of oratory, he censured the measures of the ministry with such freedom that all his places were disposed of to other noblemen; but at the accession of George I. he recovered his influence. On the breaking out of the rebellion in 1715 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces in North Britain, and was principally instrumental in effecting the total extinction of the rebellion in Scotland without much bloodshed. He arrived in London early in March 1716, and at first stood high in the favour of the king, but in a few months was strippee of his offices. This disgrace, however, did not deter him from the discharge of his parliamentary duties; he supported the bill for the impeachment of Bishop Atterbury, and lent his aid to his countrymen by opposing the bill for punishing the city of Edinburgh for the Porteous riot. In the beginning of the year 1719 he was again admitted into favour, appointed lord steward of the household, and, in April following, created duke of Greenwich; he held various offices in succession, and in 1735 was made a field marshall. He continued in the administration till after the accession of George II., when, in April 1740, a violent speech against the government led again to his dismissal from office. He was soon restored on a change of the ministry, but disapproving the measures of the new administration, and apparently disappointed at not being given the command of the army, he shortly resigned all his posts, and spent the rest of his life in privacy and retirement. He died on the 4th of October 1743. A monument by Roubillac was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey. He was twice married, and by his second wife, Jane Warburton, had five daughters; his Scottish titles passed to his brother, but his English titles became extinct, and though his eldest daughter was created baroness of Greenwich in 1767 this title also became extinct on her death in 1794.
Archibald Campbell, 3rd duke of Argyll (1682-1761), was born at Ham House in Surrey, in June 1682. On his father being created a duke, he joined the army, and served for a short time under the duke of Marlborough. In 1705 he was appointed treasurer of Scotland, and in the following year was one of the commissioners for treating of the Union; on the consummation of which, having been raised to the peerage of Scotland as earl of Islay, he was chosen one of the sixteen peers for Scotland in the first parliament of Great Britain. In 1711 he was called to the privy council, and commanded the royal army at the battle of Sheriffmuir in 1715. he was appointed keeper of the privy seal in 1721, and was afterwards entrusted with the principal management of Scottish affairs to an extent which caused him to be called “king of Scotland.” In 1733 he was made keeper of the great seal, an office which he held till his death. He succeeded to the dukedom in 1743. Both as earl of Islay and as duke of Argyll he was prominently connected (with Duncan Forbes of Culloden) with the movement for consolidating Scottish loyalty by the formation of locally recruited highland regiments. The duke was eminent not only for his political abilities, but also for his literary accomplishments, and he collected one of the most valuable private libraries in Great Britain. He died suddenly on the 15th of April 1761. He was married but had no legitimate issue, and his English property was left to a Mrs Williams, by whom he had a son, William Campbell.
The succession now passed to the descendants of the younger son of the 9th earl, the Campbells of Mamore; the 4th duke died in 1770, and was succeeded by his son John, the 5th duke (1723-1806) He was a soldier who had fought at Dettingen and Culloden, and became colonel of the 42nd regiment (Black Watch), and eventually a field marshall. He sat in the House of Commons for Glasgow from 1744 to 1761, when on his father’s succession to the dukedom he became legally disqualified, as courtesy marquess of Lorne, for a Scottish constituency; he could sit, however, for an English one, and was returned for Dover, which he represented till 1766, when he was created an English peer as Baron Sundridge, the title by which till 1892 the dukes of Argyll sat in the House of Lords. The 5th duke was an active landlord, and was the first president of the Highland and Agricultural Society. In 1759 he had married the widowed duchess of Hamilton (the beautiful Elizabeth Gunning), by whom he had two sons and two daughters. The eldest of his sons, George (d. 1841), became 6th duke, and on his death was succeeded as 7th duke by his brother John (1777-1847), who from 1799-1822 sat in parliament as member for Argyllshire. He was thrice married, and by his second wife, Joan Glassell (d. 1828), had two sons, the eldest of whom (b. 1821) died in 1837, and two daughters, the second of whom died in infancy.
George John Douglas Campbell, 8th duke (1823-1900), the second son of the 7th duke, was born on the 30th of April 1823, and succeeded his father in April 1847. He had already obtained notice as a writer of pamphlets on the disruption of the Church of Scotland, which he strove to avert, and he rapidly became prominent on the Liberal side in parliamentary politics. He was a frequent and eloquent speaker in the House of Lords, and sat as lord privy seal (1852) and postmaster-general (1855) in the cabinets of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston. In Mr Gladstone’s cabinet of 1868 he was secretary of state for India, and somewhat infelicitously signalized his term of office by his refusal, against the advice of the Indian government, to promise the amir of Afghanistan support against Russian aggression, a course which threw that ruler into the arms of Russia and was followed by the second Afghan War. His eminence alike as a great Scottish noble, and as a British statesman, was accentuated in 1871 when his son, the marquess of Lorne, married Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria; but in the political world few memorable acts on his part call for record except his resignation of the office of lord privy seal, which he held in Mr Gladstone’s administration of 1880, from his inability to assent to the Irish land legislation of 1881. He opposed the Home Rule Bill with equal vigour, though Mr Gladstone subsequently stated that, among all the old colleagues who dissented from his course, the duke was the only one whose personal relations with him remained entirely unchanged. Detached from party, the duke took an independent position, and for many years spoke his mind with great freedom in letters to The Times on public questions, especially such as concerned the rights or interests of landowners. He was no less active on scientific questions in their relation to religion, which he earnestly strove to reconcile with the progress of discovery. With this aim he published The Reign of Law (1866), Primeval Man (1869), The Unity of Nature (1884), The Unseen Foundations of Society (1893), and other essays. He also wrote on the Eastern question, with especial reference to India, the history and antiquities of Iona, patronage in the Church of Scotland, and many other subjects. The duke (to whose Scottish title was added a dukedom of the United Kingdom in 1892) died on the 24th of April 1900. He was thrice married: first (1844) to a daughter of the second duke of Sutherland (d. 1878); secondly (1881) to a daughter of Bishop Claughton of St Albans (d. 1894); and thirdly (1895) to Ina Erskine M‘Neill. Few men of the duke’s era displayed more versatility of intellect, and he was remarkable among the men of his time for his lofty eloquence.
He was succeeded as 9th duke by his eldest son John Douglas Sutherland Campbell (1845- emsp;), whose marriage in 1871 to H.R.H. Princess Louise gave him a special prominence in English public life. He was governor-general of Canada from 1878 to 1883; member of parliament for South Manchester, in the Unionist interest, 1895 to 1900; and he also became known as a writer both in prose and verse. In 1907 he published his reminiscences, Pages from the Past.
See the Autobiography and Memoirs of the 8th duke, edited by his widow (1906), which is full of interesting historical and personal detail.
(P. C. Y.; H. Ch.)
[1] The date of 1598, previously accepted, is shown by Willcock to be incorrect.